Renaming a user account via Computer Management console or the User Accounts applet does not rename the associated user profile folder. Here is how to manually rename the user profile folder in Windows XP

Rename the User Profile folder using Windows Explorer

Logon to an admin account that is not the account being renamed.

Open the Documents and Settings folder, by typing this in Start, Run dialog:

%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings

The list of folders will be displayed. Select the corresponding folder of the user account that you want to rename.

Example

%SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\OldUsername

becomes

%SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\NewUsername

Next step is to notify the system that the user profile path has changed.

Changing the ProfileImagePath value in the registry

ProfileImagePath registry value

The ProfileList registry key contains some sub-keys, which are nothing but the list of User Account Security Identifiers (SID). Each of the SID represents an Account. The key is located here:

Identify the SID for your User account, and change the Profile path

To know the SID for your user account, you may use the script sidlist.vbs

Download the script and run it. (The User Account names and SIDs will be listed in a log file, and opened automatically.)

Note down the SID for your account.

Then, in the Registry Editor, select the correct SID that belongs to your user account.

In the right-pane, double-click the ProfileImagePath value and change the profile path. ( The ProfileImagePath stores the full path of the User account home folder. )

Close Registry Editor, and restart Windows. See if you’re able to logon to that user profile successfully. Additionally, to verify if the path has been changed successfully, type SET in the Command Prompt. In case you find any abnormal behavior when running an application, you may undo the above procedure.

To identify the user’s profile path by the user SID

Use the Getsid tool from the Windows Server Resource Kit to obtain the SID. At a command prompt, use the following syntax:

getsid \\ComputerName UserName \\ComputerName UserName

For example:

getsid \\windowsxp joedoe \\windowsxp joedoe

The results look something like this:

= The SID for account WINDOWSXP\joedoe is S-1-5-21-1708537768-1993962763-1957994488-1003

After you obtain the user SID, start Registry Editor (Regedit.exe or Regedt32.exe), and then select the user SID under the following registry key: